Ok, can we have a crazy check

I’ve been looking at British politics lately largely from a desire to smack the Tories with wet fish until they stop twitching. Time for some political comic relief - so let’s cross the pond. I’m fairly sure at least 40% of American politics is written by crack comedy writers (any of Sarah Palin’s speeches alone are worth 10 minutes of giggles). Now there’s a lot of crazy going on at the moment. Most of it seems to stem from the right wing of America boiling over to new levels of silliness on an epicly crazy level. I am poking it because it’s funny.

Now, far better commentators than I have spoken on the teabaggers (*snerk* seriously, you couldn’t make this up!) the “birthers” and the “ZOMG I’m just batshit insaners!” but what’s boggling me is how PASSIONATE these people are.

They care. They really care. They’re frothing at the mouth. They’re steaming. Crazy is dripping off them in huge sticky lumps. They’re energised and furious and passionate and riled and expressing it by screaming, yelling in government buildings, heckling president speeches, going batshit insane in public meetings and carrying great big guns everywhere with vaguely ominous slogans that would be threatening if they weren’t rather pathetic.

See, and that boggles me. It boggles me that all these people are so DAMNED HORRIFIED about the terrible scourge of healthcare, Obama being born in Hawaii or whatever fantasy has them all running around with their hair on fire.

These are the same people who didn’t stir their backsides a single inch when Bush was wiretapping, shredding habeus corpus, one line vetoing, starting fun wars based on fantasy and even torturing people. Some of the worst abuses that are realistically imaginable were committed by the last administration (and may or may not be silently continued) and they don’t give a damn - but the idea that maybe the richest country in the world should have a civilised health care system and they lose their shit on an epic level? *boggle*


And boggle the second. The ignorance. Seriously, it boggles me. Death panels, the birth certificate baloney. The “Stephen Hawkings would have died under the NHS” lunacy.

I don’t understand this. See, I can understand ignorance. Ignorance is easy and common. No, what I DON’T get is CARING PASSIONATELY about something, really being riled about it, being energised to DO SOMETHING but at the same time doing NO RESEARCH on it at all.

See, I get ott passionate about politics. Beloved just LOVES that look on my face that says I have found a political outrage and wish to tell him all about it. At length. My MP hates me with a firey passion bordering on homicidal mania. I should think every cabinet minister’s department has people trained to recognise my handwriting to throw my letters in bins unopened.

But righteously kicking arse is step 3. You can't skip step 2. (Step 1 being awareness) Step 2 for some good righteous political anger and action is RESEARCH. Being angry about an issue you know nothing about is ridiculous. Actually spending time and energy trying to address and issue you have made a stand on without doing basic fact finding about it boggles the mind.

I think Margaret of Margaret and Helen (Great Blog BTW) sums it up best with:
“September 12, 2009 – Tea Party Hillbilly Rally - 78,000 marched but only 3 seemed to know what they were marching about.”